What is a Children's Trust?

The Children's Trust is part of a broad partnership that provides core, enhanced and intensive services to children and young people on their journey from birth to adulthood.

In 2003, Victoria Climbie. a young girl in the care of her great  aunt and the man she lived with, suffered horrendous abuse before her eventual death at their hands.  The event sparked widespead and heated debate about the nature of children's services. It was felt that, if these services had worked closer with one another, then this tragedy could have been prevented.

In 2004, Government passed the Children Act.  This act gave new objectives to organisations that provide services for children and young people.  It is now a priority of all local councils to arrange a partnership between all these organisations.  This partnership forms the basis of a children's trust.  In North East Lincolnshire, this arrangement is called the Change4Children Partnership and includes partners such as the Local Authority, Health, Police, Connexions, Learning & Skills Council and Voluntary Action North East Lincolnshire.

'Every Child Matters' is a green paper that preceded the Children Act.  In this paper, Government outlined five outcomes that should be achieved through these changes in children's services. The outcomes are that every child should be healthy, safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution and achieve economic well-being.

To achieve these outcomes, we are told that we must integrate:

Children's trusts work to make the positive outcomes mentioned in 'Every Child Matters' a reality.  In North East Lincolnshire, the Children's Trust was officially launched in the spring of 2008.  The Trust was already working in new ways to help local children and young people to achieve their full potential and enjoy life.

The Children's Trust is responsible for organising the provision of services that can work on many levels to care for local children, no matter how big or small their particular need may be.

Initially, the Children's Trust will be focussing on three areas of development:

Neighbourhood Working brings together all the organisations that provide services for children, young people and their families in a community (or two or three communities, depending on their size) to enable them to join up and work together. This can already been seen in Children's Centres where midwives, health visitors, family support workers and childcare providers all work together to support families and children under five years of age.

Commissioning is about looking at the unique needs of individual children or young people and also the wider issues of each community and working together in partnership to ensure that those needs are met.  Already, organisations are working together to provide a range of out-of-school activities both in term time and during school holidays that suit the interests of children and young people in each community.

Workforce Development  provides training and support for the whole Children's Services' workforce in North East Lincolnshire to ensure that all staff are trained to the same high standard, with particular regard to safeguarding children and young people, to enable them to work in new ways and to ensure that they are informed of changes in practice and legislation.